Background: Sub-Saharan Africa has a great burden of critical illness with limited health care resources. We evaluated the feasibility and utility of the modified Sequential Organ Function Assessment (mSOFA) score in assessing morbidity and mortality in the National Referral Hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) for one year.
Methods: We conducted a prospective, observational cohort study on patients above 12 years of age admitted to the ICU at Mulago Hospital (Kampala, Uganda). All SOFA scores were determined at admission and at 48 h. We modified the SOFA score by replacing the PaO/FiO ratio with SPO/FiO. The primary outcome was ICU mortality.
Results: This ICU cohort of 118 patients had a mean age of 37 years and an ICU mortality rate of 46.6%. Non-survivors had higher initial (7.7 SD 3.8 vs. 5.5 SD 3.3; p = 0.007), mean (8.1 SD 3.9 vs 4.7 SD 2.6; p < 0.001) and highest mSOFA scores (9.4 SD 4.2 vs. 5.8 SD 3.2; p < 0.001), with an increase of 1.0 (SD 3.1) mSOFA on average after 48 h when compared to survivors (p < 0.001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves for each mSOFA category was: initial-0.68, mean-0.76, highest-0.76 and delta mSOFA-0.74. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed no significant association between mSOFA scores and mortality.
Conclusion: Our results confirm that calculation of the mSOFA score is feasible for an ICU population in a resource-limited country. More data are needed to test for an association between mSOFA and mortality.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12871-017-0304-8 | DOI Listing |
Int J Biol Macromol
January 2025
School of Textiles and Clothing, Yancheng Institute of Technology, Yancheng, Jiangsu 224051, China. Electronic address:
The electrical conductivity and antibacterial properties are crucial characteristics for bacterial cellulose (BC) based membranes to be broadly applied in the field of wearable electronics. In the study, to achieve these aims, alpha-lipoic acid (LA) was utilized as anchoring groups and reducing agent, hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HP-β-CD) capped magnetic particles (FeO NPs) and the in-situ formed silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were sequentially incorporated into the BC matrix to fabricate BC based nanocomposite membranes (HP-β-CD/FeO/LA@BC and HP-β-CD/FeO/LA/Ag@BC). Fourier transform attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) analysis proved the dense networks were formed in the modified BC membranes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceutics
December 2024
Department of Pharmaceutics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
Liver fibrosis, a hallmark of chronic liver diseases, is characterized by excessive extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition and scar tissue formation. Current antifibrotic nanomedicines face significant limitations, including poor penetration into fibrotic tissue, rapid clearance, and suboptimal therapeutic efficacy. The dense fibrotic ECM acts as a major physiological barrier, necessitating the development of a targeted delivery strategy to achieve effective therapeutic outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMolecules
January 2025
Computational Systems Biology Group, National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Knowing which residues of a protein are important for its function is of paramount importance for understanding the molecular basis of this function and devising ways of modifying it for medical or biotechnological applications. Due to the difficulty in detecting these residues experimentally, prediction methods are essential to cope with the sequence deluge that is filling databases with uncharacterized protein sequences. Deep learning approaches are especially well suited for this task due to the large amounts of protein sequences for training them, the trivial codification of this sequence data to feed into these systems, and the intrinsic sequential nature of the data that makes them suitable for language models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaterials (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Chemistry, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-ro, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea.
The surface of titanium foil can be modified by heating in the air, in a N flow, and in an NH flow. Upon heating in the air, the elemental Ti gradually transforms to TiO at 550 °C and to rutile TiO at above 700 °C. Treatment in a N flow leads similarly to TiO at 600 °C and TiO at 700 °C, although the overall reaction is slower.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
The Rowett Institute, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, UK.
Vitamin D is essential for healthy skeletal growth and is increasingly recognised for its role in chronic disease development, inflammation and immunity. 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations are an indicator of vitamin D status and are normally analysed in plasma or serum samples in clinical settings, while archaeological studies rely on the identification of skeletal markers of vitamin D deficiency, such as rickets. Here, we determined 25(OH)D concentrations in hair specimens ('locks') that had been sampled close to the root, aligned by cut end, and sliced into sequential segments from participants (n = 16), from Aberdeen, Scotland, using a modified protocol designed to minimise sample size.
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